GTCR’s former nursing home point man a top Rauner donor

In our original story last week which broke the Bruce Rauner nursing home scandal, we quoted Edgar D. Jannotta, Jr. (also known as Ned) who bragged in 2003 about the reasons why private equity firm GTCR put up the money to start Trans Healthcare, Inc. (“THI”).

Before it was driven to financial ruin by poor management, as evidenced by enormous jury verdicts in wrongful death and negligence lawsuits, THI was a major player in the nursing home industry, having gobbled up hundreds of facilities around the country.

According to Jannotta, THI’s launch and the plan to acquire nursing homes appealed to GTCR “because a new prospective payment system for Medicare was just being implemented,” and “[w]e thought it would create a lot of distress, and there would be a decline in multiples for assets and a decline in buyers for those assets.”

Jannotta was a principal of GTCR from 2002 to 2011, specializing in the pharmaceuticals and medical healthcare industry.

A Jannotta bio also lists him as a director of THI at one point. It is unclear whether Jannotta remains a director of anything that might remain of THI. Recent disclosure reports filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections list Jannotta as currently employed as an executive of William Blair & Company.

Those same State Board of Elections disclosure reports record Jannotta contributing $5,300 to Rauner’s campaign on March 29 of last year.

In November of last year, Rauner injected $500,000 into his own campaign. That move lifted the fundraising limits for all of the candidates.

Jannotta was deposed in the at least one of the wrongful death cases. See the court’s docket entries of July 11, 2013 here.

Rauner still refuses to explain with any specificity his role and that of his former firm in the nursing home industry. Similarly, Rauner has yet to tell voters to what extent he may have personally profited from nursing home industry investments in the years prior to the ruin of THI and other vehicles.

Doug Ibendahl is a Chicago Attorney and a former General Counsel of the Illinois Republican Party.